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Thence, having with difficulty escaped death' in the persecution which broke out against his episcopal friend, he hastened back to his own country, and, as we have seen, had acquired great influence over Oswiu's son, now the co-regent, who had made him abbot of his new monastery at Ripon.

CHAP. VI.

A.D. 664.

Wilfrid in the

The conference at Whitby began with an exhortation from Oswiu to peace and concord, and a determination to discover and follow the true tradition on the Pascal question. Colman having been requested to deliver his opinion, appealed to the tradition handed down from St John as the authority for the custom the king had learnt at Iona. Agilbert followed, and requested that Wilfrid, who could speak the Anglo-Saxon language, Arments of might be allowed to deliver their common sentiments. Council. The latter then detailed how he had seen the festival of Easter celebrated at Rome, "where the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul lived, taught, suffered, and were buried," and throughout Gaul and Italy where he had himself travelled. The same custom he declared obtained throughout Africa, Asia, Egypt, Greece, indeed the whole world, save and except only that obscure corner where dwelt the Picts and Scots. The controversy now waxed warm, and was carried on on both sides with skill and acuteness. How it would have ended it is impossible to say, had not Wilfrid adduced in support of the Roman customs the often quoted words of the Lord, "Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it; and to thee will I give the keys of the kingdom of heaven." Thereupon the king turned to Colman, and inquired whether these words were really

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A.D. 664.

CHAP. VI. addressed to the Apostle Peter? "They were, without doubt," was the reply. And can you bring forward anything like such high authority for your Columba? continued the king. "None," said the bishop. "And are ye both, without controversy," rejoined Oswiu, "agreed on this, that it was especially to Peter that these words were spoken, and that to him the keys of the kingdom of heaven were given by the Lord?" "We are," said they. "Then," said the king, "I too declare to you, since he is the doorkeeper, I will not oppose him; but as far as I can, I will follow his commands and precepts, lest perchance, when I come to the gates of heaven, there be no one to open to me, if he turn his back upon me, who is proved to hold the keys." The king's jest was received with applause by those present. Whatever their motives were, superstitious fear, or a wish to side with the king, they concurred in his decision, and the council closed. Colman in disgust retired to Scotland; Cedd returned to his diocese, and complied with the Roman custom; Tuda, the last of the Scottish succession, succeeded to Colman's see, and likewise observed the Roman practice. Thus through the political predominance of Wessex, the influence of Wilfrid, and doubtless the prestige which the Roman see had borrowed from the Roman empire, the Roman party gained a victory in England over their Irish rivals.

Conversion of
Sussex.

One kingdom only now remained where the work of the missionary was needed. This was Sussex, which though in their own neighbourhood had been strangely neglected by the Kentish clergy. It is true that Dicul, one of the companions of Fursæus, whom we have seen labouring with success in East Anglia, had visited the district, and erected an insignificant cell at Bosham, where, surrounded by woods and the sea, he had with five or six brethren, "served the Lord in humility and poverty." But his efforts had been of little avail amongst the pagan population. The

A.D. 681.

in Sussed.

king, indeed, had received baptism in the Mercian kingdom CHAP. VI. together with his queen, but they had done little for the evangelization of their subjects'. The work was reserved for the coadjutor of Agilbert at the council of Whitby. On his return from France, where he received consecration as bishop of York, Wilfrid had been thrown on the Sussex coast, and had narrowly escaped death from the heathen wreckers3. Since then he had experienced strange vicissitudes. Driven from his diocese, hated by the new king of Northumbria, and finding no security in Wessex or Mercia, he had after his escape from prison, sought refuge amongst the heathen tribes in the wilds of Sussex, and was enabled to complete Wilfrid labours what the small Irish mission had begun and the Kentish mission had left undone. Ethelwalch the king received him with pleasure, and Wilfrid, who had already had experience in missionary work on the barbarous shores of Friesland", undertook their conversion with alacrity. His visit was most opportune. Separated from the rest of England by forests and jungles, the wretched people had for three years suffered from drought, followed by a famine so severe, that in the depth of their despair they linked themselves hand in hand by forties and fifties, leaped from the rocks, and were dashed in pieces or drowned. Moreover, though occupying a long line of sea-coast, they were but little acquainted with the art of fishing, and thus had the greatest difficulty in getting a livelihood. Wilfrid, therefore, and those who were with him, saw that their mission was to civilize and feed the people of Sussex as well as preach the gospel to them. They therefore began by teaching them the art of fishing. Collecting all the nets they could find, he and his followers went out to sea, shared with the

1 Wulfhere, the Mercian king, had rewarded him for his change of faith with the grant of the Isle of Wight. Bede, IV. 13. His queen had been baptized in her own country. Bede,

IV. 13.

2 See Eddius, c. 25, 26.

3 Bede, IV. 13, and below chap. viii.

4 Bede, IV. 13.

CHAP. VI. poor creatures the proceeds of their success, and showed A.D. 681-686. them how to provide for themselves. This, and the missionary's acquaintance with their own tongue, speedily won the hearts of his famine-stricken flock. Wilfrid himself baptized the chiefs and their warlike retinue, while the four priests who accompanied him administered the rite to the people. And on the very day of the baptism, as Bede tells the tale, the windows of heaven were opened, the refreshing shower descended, the parched land grew green, and the bodies as well as the souls of the people felt the blessing of the bishop's presence'. The king presented him with lands at Selsey, on which to build a monastery, and for five years Wilfrid performed the work of a missionary bishop among the people of Sussex, and reclaimed them from their heathenism.

Rise of a National Church.

Already, before this last remnant of a heathen people had been gathered into the fold of Christ, the various efforts of the different missions throughout the island had been in a great measure consolidated, and the cluster of missionary stations had begun to be converted into an established Church. The man suited for this important work had come, not from Rome, or Gaul, or the Celtic monasteries of the North, but from Tarsus, "a city of CiA.D. 668–689. licia." Nominated by Pope Vitalian in place of Wighard,

Labours of
Theodore.

and accompanied by the African Hadrian, the new archbishop brought to this island the Roman love of order and organization. As soon as he arrived he visited the several Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, and succeeded in obliterating all traces of the peculiar customs of the missionaries from Iona. Summoning a synod at Hertford', he introduced canons for regulating the power of the bishops, defined the rites of monasteries, enacted laws respecting divorce, unlawful marriages, and other points, which have always been a source of difficulty to missionaries and infant churches, and Spelman's Concilia, p. 152.

1 Bede, IV. 13.

further, with Hadrian's aid, he converted many of the monasteries into seminaries of useful learning, where from the lips of teachers familiar with Greek and Latin, the AngloSaxon youth could learn prosody, astronomy, and ecclesiastical arithmetic1.

CHAP. VI.

A.D. 668-389.

missionary

England.

Thus within a space of less than ninety years, the close of the work of evangelization in this island had been accom- period in plished. The Anglo-Saxons, once notorious for their fierceness and barbarity, had so far been softened by Christian influences that in no country was the new faith more manifestly the parent of civilization. Intercourse with the metropolis of the West rapidly introduced various arts and sciences, replaced the wooden strawthatched church of the Celtic missionary by structures fashioned after the model of the basilicas of the West, roofed them with lead, and filled them with glass, and improved the music by bringing into universal use the Gregorian chant. The same influences before long affected also the laws; they regulated the time for bringing the Saxon child to the font, denounced a penalty if it died unbaptized, declared the spiritual relationship there contracted to be on a par with natural affinity, forbade servile work on Sundays, regulated the treatment of the slave, forbade all heathen practices, such as sorcery, necromancy, and divining. Thus at last the vision of Gregory was realized, and the land of the fair-haired Saxon boys took its place among the Christian kingdoms, destined, in its turn, by the hands of devoted men, to transmit the light it had itself received to kindred Teutonic tribes in the Germanic forests.

1 Bede, IV. 2. Lingard's A. S. C. 1. 78.
Lappenberg, I. 172. Bede, IV. 2.

3 Spelman's Concilia, p. 155. Kemble, II. 490-493.

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